1. Field of the Related Art
The present disclosure relates to printers, and more particularly, to a method and system for managing a plurality of print queues of a plurality of multifunction devices (MFDs).
2. Background of the Related Art
The concept of “network printing,” in which any of a plurality of computers submit digital data to one of any number of printers over a network, is well known. The administration of printing devices in a network environment is typically a tedious and time consuming task for network administrators. In particular, for large and complex network environments having several local servers, there may be a large number of printers distributed throughout the network. Network administrators must not only install new printing devices on the network, but they must also create and manage the print queues associated with the printing devices and facilitate network users connecting to and utilizing the printing devices.
A conventional printing system uses a client/server architecture that usually includes three primary components. These components include (i) a client, (ii) a server, and (iii) an output device. The client conveys print and management requests to the server and receives responses from the server that arise in response to the submitted requests. The server receives these requests from the client, performs the required actions for each request, and returns the responses to the client. One such request from a client is a print request, i.e., a request to print one or more copies of one or more documents, with the printed pages output using one or more features. A print request may represent a collection of one or more documents to be printed, as well as instructions for printing. The server organizes the documents indicated in the print request submitted by the client into a print job. The server then sends the print job and any associated job control commands to the output device.
The output device is a physical device, or hardware, that is capable of rendering images of documents and producing hard copy output of the print jobs received from the server. The output device can then return responses to the server regarding its current state or the status of the received print jobs. The output device is commonly a printer. However, the output device may also be any type of multifunction device (MFD).
In general, a MFD operates as a plurality of different imaging devices, including, but not limited to, a printer, copier, fax machine, and/or scanner. In recent years the basic office copier has evolved into what can be referred to as a MFD. With digital technology, a machine with the basic outward appearance of a traditional copier can perform at least the additional functions of printing documents submitted in digital form over a network, sending and receiving messages via facsimile, recording hard-copy original images in digital form and sending the resulting data over a network, such as in electronic mail and/or recording hard-copy original images in digital form on a compact disc or equivalent medium.
In the area of digital printing and copying, there has been a growth in demand for MFDs. Such MFD devices may assume the form of an arrangement in which a single print engine (e.g., xerographic or thermal ink jet print engine) is coupled with a plurality of different image input devices (or “services”), with such devices being adapted to produce image related information for use by the printer or transmitted over a network. The image related information, in one example, could have its origin in video facsimile signals, microfilm, data processing information, light scanning platens for full size documents, aperture cards, and microfiche. MFDs provide a broader range of functionality than traditional single-function devices, such as dedicated printers, copiers, and scanners. As a result, since MFDs are universally used, it would be useful to track and manage print queues associated with MFDs.
For example, in an office environment, a typical user has a desktop computer that has some set of printers installed on it. These printers may or may not be the ones that the user most often prints to. Assistance from other users/administrators may yield additional printers being added onto their system which the user does not use, but is hesitant to delete. The list of printers that can eventually appear on a user's system can be lengthy and confusing. Knowing which ones are actually necessary is not always clear. Also, some printers may be added to the network while others are removed. Unless the user specifically keeps track of these new resources, or verifies the existence of the old ones, he/she may not become aware of their status. In fact, the user can actually waste a significant amount of time trying to print to a printer that does not exist or to a print queue that is overloaded.
Once a print queue has been created and configured for a particular printing device, network users may begin utilizing the printing device by locating and connecting to the desired print queue, and installing any necessary print drivers. However, searching for the desired print queue often requires the network user to search lists of print queues on multiple network servers. Thus, in networking environments employing a large number of servers, finding a desired print queue can be confusing and very time consuming.
As a result, in conventional document printing systems, a user must specify the physical printer to be used to print a specific job or print a document. Therefore, the user must know the attributes of every available physical printer on the network in order to decide which printer would best print the desired document(s). Additionally, if new printers are added to the network, each user must ascertain the capabilities of each new printer and the print address for each newly added printer, assuming the user even knows that new printers have been added. Thus, newly added printers can be available for quite some time without being used at their full capacity and old printers may have been removed or incorporated with additional functions not known to the users.
Consequently, current systems lack the capability to effectively inform a plurality of users using a plurality of MFDs the status of the print queues of the plurality of MFDs. The present disclosure is intended to overcome the drawbacks of other methods by providing for a system and method for managing one or more print queues associated with the plurality of MFDs.